Operations Vs. Strategy
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3AyHCUd
If you’re an engineer then you might not like to talk about strategy. We get it! But, strategy is super important in any successful organization. This week, we are going to focus on how strategy is a component that we need to focus on as well as operations.
The simple fact is, strategy is not just simple planning; it’s a larger item that shows where your organization will be going someday. If you’re technical, you might not understand this. You might be someone who hears a bunch of strategic ideas and instantly thinks that none of it can be done. You might be thinking that the ideas are crazy and completely impossible.
The important thing to keep in mind is that none of these strategies and tactics need to be done tomorrow. These are ideas that are going to take time and very small steps forward. Strategy is where your organization is headed. You don’t have to get there by the end of the week!
Where your company is currently and where you will be in the future will look drastically different. You just have to focus on what you’re doing right now and then build to that future company bit by bit.
Look at strategy as the goal that your company is aiming towards, and operations are how you will get there. Strategy should be done in steps and you never have to know what the future step will be. If you’re on step 2, then do what is necessary for step 2 and slowly, step 3 will work its way to your understanding and become clear to your company. Once you’re on step 3, that can be your focus until step 4 begins to form and take place.
Another important thing to keep in mind is, while strategy is important, it’s not everything. Some people get too lost in strategy and nothing ever gets done. Those are the people that engineers hate. Their heads are always in the clouds and nothing ever happens. Operations are the day-to-day tasks that allow strategy to be accomplished. Both strategy and operations must work hand-in-hand.
The frustrating thing about strategy is you most likely will not see the fruits of your labor for months if not years. Results from operations can be seen by the end of the day. This doesn't make one more important than the other — it simply means that you have to be patient and know that both are very critical to your organization no matter the length of time it takes to see results.
In order for both of these to work together, there must be trust. People in strategy need to understand that their engineers will have the ideas and the operations people will be able to accomplish it. The people in operations need to look at the strategic people and know that they have great direction and know where the company is headed. When both work together, that’s when success happens.
In order to understand if your strategy and operations are working together, look back at your company and where you were a couple of years ago. Have you accomplished what your strategists thought would accomplish with the operations help? If not, be honest and make changes based on what you see that is working. Essentially, don’t just take steps to take them. Take steps to get where you’re trying to go.
The moral of the story: strategy is where you are going and operations are how you get there.
Talk Like a CEO
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3AyHCUd
Last week, our focus was talking like a CFO. This week, we’re tackling how to talk like a CEO!
You might have heard the phrase: one throat to choke, one back to pat. Well, that’s the CEO of a company. They are responsible for their company in the good and the bad, for better or worse. CEO is a title that a lot of people want, but it comes with a lot of weight.
As an MSP, when you’re talking to your clients in a meeting, the CEO might be trying not to fall asleep. Don’t take this personally, their focus is just mainly on the success of the company at large.
With that information in mind, there is one sure-fire way to get the CEO on your side. Make them look good. Yep, it’s that simple. Let them know how your products and services will make their company excel.
More than half of the CEO’s job is politics — essentially, making their company look good and being responsible with their decisions. They are looking for success, which means you need to let them know how your products and services are going to bring that success.
One thing to keep in mind is that success looks different for every CEO. Just like finding success with a CFO, talking to your client’s CEO is how you can determine how success is measured in their company. It is going to be a moving target, really. You can not take one thing that is important to one CEO and assume that it is going to be the same target that the next CEO is shooting for. Having conversations with each CEO will allow you to aim for the right things.
Another important tip is to get a grip on what the company’s culture is. Knowing what the culture is will allow you to get to the table in front of the CEO seamlessly. Some companies are hierarchical where there is an order of people that you must talk to or go through in order to chat with the CEO. Go through that process and be respectful of the way their business is structured. Other businesses are more of a level playing field and it’s okay to go directly to the CEO or upper-level management. Just be aware of that culture and go through the process of communicating accordingly. If you don’t, the CEO will be much less likely to meet with you at all, or they will choose to skip any meetings going forward.
The last tip we have for you is to learn the CEO’s vision for the company. The CEO is constantly going back to the basics of what the mission and vision of the company are and how you fit into that. Figure out what that vision is and put what you’re bringing to the table in that context.
A great way to do that is to go to your client or potential client’s website and write in your own words what you believe their vision is. In your meeting with the client, ask the CEO to take a look at it and make sure that what you wrote is correct. This will let the CEO know that you understand them and desire to make them look good with your solutions.
The CEO’s opinion is important, so have a listening-focused conversation, learn their measure of success, get a grip on their company culture and understand their CEO’s vision for the company. If you do all of that, you’ll be talking like a CEO and bringing success to you and your client in a heartbeat.
Holidays
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3AyHCUd
The holidays are here and that means that you might be figuring out who has to work over this time and who gets time off. If you’re an IT professional, you might be hoping to get a moment of peace and quiet in an empty office over the holidays.
As IT professionals, we want to celebrate the holidays, but there are always projects that can only be done over a day off. Take Thanksgiving for instance. You can eat with your family on Thursday but then come in on Friday to do a major rollout on things like phones or swap out a couple of servers. This is sometimes the ideal situation for IT professionals. You can still celebrate with your loved ones, but you also get to really get stuff done without interruption or calls coming in. A quiet office is also a great break from those loved ones after a holiday spent together.
Say you came in on the Friday following Thanksgiving and got lots of stuff done. This allows you to monitor that progress over the weekend and fix any bugs or problems that might take place without interruption still.
These holidays can become like custody battles. While many professionals are trying to get time off for the holidays, IT professionals are typically debating over who gets to work certain holidays or periods of time following the holidays in order to get done with everything they’re hoping to.
This is called change management, which is super important in the IT world. The holidays are generally where we center this change management. Weekends work alright, but holidays are the best time to make big changes and implement new technologies.
Holidays can be a conflicting time as well. The personal side also comes into play. Family is very important, and spending time together is what the holidays are all about. Balancing this family time and also getting stuff done for work can be a complicated game to play. If you absolutely love your job, this becomes even more difficult. But, if you can learn to balance these two things, the holidays will be both a special time of togetherness and a time of solitude work.
There is another aspect to holidays that most people don’t think about, and that is the fact that, worldwide, we all celebrate different holidays. Some holidays are universal while others are very specific to a region and it is important to keep these in mind when deciding when to work and when to take a break. You might also be able to let another take care of what you’re trying to accomplish if they are in another region and working when the United States is celebrating a holiday.
If you’re a business professional, it could be beneficial to have a conversation with your IT staff and figure out if they actually want the time off over the holiday season or if they would benefit from working one or two days in order to work in a quiet office, uninterrupted.
Inspiration
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3AyHCUd
What are you inspired by? How does that inspiration play into your day-to-day life? Start thinking about those questions as we jump into our topic on innovation and inspiration.
First, let’s look at some definitions.
Innovation is a new method, process, idea, etc. Inspiration is the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative. Now, how do these two words relate to one another? Innovation comes from inspiration. Innovation comes from weird areas — sometimes laziness, hubris or impatience. But, when we challenge the status quo and do something different, we create inspiration for a variety of projects or passions.
Let’s look at space exploration as an example. The latest space trip involving billionaires and non-scientific people is the latest and greatest thing in all things space exploration. This type of travel is not easy and is not as simple as someone might assume. There is a lot that has to go into this flight and massive amounts of innovating and problem-solving are necessary. So, how did this end up becoming a reality? Innovation.
Lots of research went into solving this problem, which resulted in not just more accessible space travel, but Tesla became a well-known car brand. Tesla was created with the goal to make a vehicle that was battery-operated and durable enough to go to space. So, the car was created out of innovation with space travel being the inspiration. Crazy, right?!
Another thing happened through space exploration: demand for battery-operated vehicles grew. Tesla has dramatically changed the landscape that every automatic manufacturer is working on. Because Tesla showed that electric cars are possible, the company inspired manufacturers. Tesla wasn’t created to sell more cars, it was created to make more demand for batteries. And this all stemmed from billionaires wanting to go to space and do something crazy.
The changes that are being made in our world today are not always market-driven — they are inspired by the idea that we can do something better than the current way of doing things.
Ultimately, there are a lot of benefits of trying to reach beyond your comfort zone.
So, for your business, how long have you been in a rut? How long have you been doing the same thing? How are you going to innovate and inspire entrepreneurship inside your organization?
In order to make positive changes in your business, you must challenge the status quo and do something that might not seem possible.
Business Shiny Things
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3uooSU
Last week, we talked about shiny things in IT. This week, we’re bringing you the business side of shiny things. Let’s dive in!
Let’s say an executive goes to a Microsoft Conference and learns about a bunch of new technologies and software. Then, this business executive likes the sound of them and signs up for a bunch of new things. This is all exciting and new to the business professional because it has the potential to bring new productivity to the office and streamline everything. The problem is, this business professional gives it to the IT professional and expects it to be implemented in order to make their business better. This brings a lot of work to the IT department and may not work well with the existing systems, making it necessary to rework the entire way of doing things.
The other issue is that the business professional bought shiny things without an understanding of how the shiny things will actually help the business. Great ideas are fun, but they don’t always work very well, are expensive, and require lots of upkeep. Basically, it’s bad to invest in shiny things without the demand already there.
The latest methodology or frameworks can be overly complicated and might not work for your business. And, the more complicated the system, the more difficult it will be to implement. Even if something looks great, it just might not be the best option for your company.
Look at your framework as a playground. Have people do things the way they want to, then, when “recess” is done, have everyone line up at the door together. This way of doing things allows for people to feel comfortable in how they go about working, but still keeps things streamlined for your business. As long as you line up at the door, you can do things the way you would like.
The biggest question to ask yourself when looking at new, shiny business things is this: what business practices fit into what I am already doing? It should feel like implementing new systems does not take much effort and allow a slow and natural move.
Back in the day, Palm Pilots were all the rage. People bought them hoping to be better organized in their day-to-day lives. The issue was that you already had to be organized to have the Palm Pilot work for you. If you already struggled to be organized, then a Palm Pilot would not help you. Or, if you’re not already using a day planner, then an electronic day planner will be no help to you.
Think about how you already think and work and find new technologies that will fit into that and make your business more efficient. Also, think about your employees. Every single person is different and new systems will not always work for every single person.
Augment things that you already do and allow shiny things to drive your business instead of confusing and overcomplicating. Make sure that the shiny and cool technology has a practical purpose that you can implement and support.
Shiny IT Things
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3uooSU
Shiny things: we love them, we hate them and sometimes they ruin our day. But, what are shiny things exactly? In the IT world, it is any new technology or systems that aren’t useful, but very exciting.
New technology isn’t a bad thing, but there is always something new — how do you decide to implement this new technology or use the systems that are already in place? Generally, older IT people have had to update technology multiple times, so new, shiny things mostly mean more work than anything else. Or, some technology used to be so cool, but now serves no purpose.
With that being said, you can see why some older IT guys get a little cranky. Younger IT professionals may get excited about new technology because they have not had to install that new technology six times. Shiny things are fun, but can become less fun over time.
Although they can become less fun, shiny things are not completely useless. If you can make something look cool and have it function very well, then that is a huge bonus. When creating things for clients to use, you want it to look professional and put together. Something that looks good and feels good to a client is a good thing. So, making something shiny while still being functional is like putting the cherry on top of a moist piece of cake.
Shiny things go beyond just technology too. It can be the latest trend, the next best thing or a way to achieve some sort of status.
Let’s take AirPods for example. They have become a really popular item to show status, popularity or income. This has become such a sought after item, simply for the status that it brings. People have begun cutting the wires off of their wire earbuds, getting rid of all functionality whatsoever, simply to look the part.
We spend so much money and time on shiny things, when we should be really asking ourselves how our money could be better spent. Are there other things that would be a better investment for your money? Do you want this item or do you need it?
Appearance is important, but should not be the only reason something shiny is purchased. Look out for new, shiny technology and make sure you ask yourself if you really need it before purchasing.
Drinks with IT - August: For the Love of Coffee
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3uooSUX
Drinks with IT is our series of episodes where IT professionals guest star on the podcast, we crack open a cold one and let the conversation flow naturally. Our goal with these chats is to let you be a fly on the wall during our conversations so you can get an idea of the types of things IT professionals talk and care about.
Here are some things we talked about!
- Types of Coffee ⇨ Whether your go-to drink includes a pot of coffee, french press or a trip to Starbucks, most people drink some form of coffee to start their day. Adam has always loved plain, black coffee, but Skip introduced him to a whole new world of coffee possibilities.
- Community ⇨ Having a coffee pot or machine creates community in your office or work space. It’s not just coffee, though! Having a stocked fridge with red bull, gatorade, tea or soda can be a great way to build up your office.
- Show You Care ⇨ As an employer, you have the amazing opportunity to treat your employees with the utmost care by doing small, simple things to make their days better. This might include keeping a fridge stocked with their favorite drinks or getting a good coffee pot. Bring in donuts every so often and create a space where people feel excited to come to work and do their job.
- Litmus Test ⇨ Try this exercise at your next job interview to see if the work environment is healthy and if the employer or company takes care of its employees. Just ask for a cup of coffee and see what the response is. If you are handed a bitter cup of cheap coffee, it might not be the best place to work. If you are handed a hot cup of creamy coffee, maybe the employer has put a little extra money into taking care of the employees in the building.
We loved chatting about these topics and more! Listen to this week’s episode of Humanize IT to get the full conversation.
Travel and Technology
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3uooSU
Technology is wonderful, but have we become too dependent on it when it comes to traveling and our everyday lives?
When you do not have technology, what do you do? There are huge areas of the world that always have signal and internet connection. What happens when technology doesn’t support us in the ways that we expect it to? All of a sudden, we are at a loss and are left to find other options.
We have become solely dependent on technology to the point where, if something isn’t working, everything kind of stops. This is a huge problem in business, but it also affects travel too. Here’s an example.
Let’s say you are vacationing in a new country where you do not speak the language. This is not an issue because of technology that provides translation tools that help us communicate. But, if your phone dies or you lose signal, you no longer have a means of communication. What do you do then? Most people wouldn’t know what to do, meaning that technology has taken over that area of travel and made it seem like other options are pointless.
Technology isn’t bad per se, it has made traveling much easier and more accessible. But, when you are at a loss or when things come to a standstill when technology malfunctions or can not work, then that is an issue.
With that being said, technology has advanced how people travel and has made lots of improvements to people’s experiences.
There are apps that read and translate signs, making driving and getting places easier than ever before. Entertainment on flights! Wow, people now have options for movies, better internet connection and an ability to track the flight as you go along. Translation tools also make communicating much easier so you can get around and be more assimilated into the culture of where you are traveling to.
Like anything, with the positives of technology also come negatives, making it really important to practice taking detoxes from technology.
We’re not over using technology, but if we are at a standstill because of a lack of technology, then that is a problem. We need to recognize in our personal lives that you need to have other options outside of the technology that you generally use in order to be prepared.
Processes can simplify when it comes to using technology. It does not have to be in every single aspect of our lives. It can be refreshing or easier to use a non-augmented option — it might give you some self-confidence, too!
Technology is not bad. It has made traveling much easier. Just make sure you are not solely dependent on it for all areas of your life — especially travel.
EpISODE 164: Complexity is the Enemy
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2NHRRDl
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3uooSUX
Having a simple solution is better than having a perfect solution. People are constantly in danger of over-complicating solutions. Here is how you can simplify things and make them more elegant and easier to understand.
The world is complex. When creating a project or coding a system, it is super important to document your work. Commenting and reminding yourself of certain tips and tricks is helpful for you down the road. You should put 2-3 lines of comments for every line of code to make it less complex and increase your ability to return to the code later on and still understand how to use it efficiently. Plus, if you comment as you’re creating, the code will be fresh in your mind and make more sense than it will at any other point in time.
We can make things a little over the top. We’re human — it happens!
The best way to know if you have over-complicated a project is to explain it to someone. If you launch into a long narrative and need to explain every little detail in order for the person to make sense of what you have created, then it is probably too difficult to actually implement or be used in your business by other people. If so, it is time to step back and rework your project in order to be simple and easier to understand.
It’s easy to get distracted by the possibility of creating something cool and forget to ask yourself if the process needs to be automated in the first place.
Look at your process. Can you explain it in less than 30 seconds? If not, it might be time to take the big, complicated process and take steps to simplify so your business can more-easily manage the system.
Understand the ins and outs of your process so you can let your company and other employees know what it is and how it is solving problems. Once everyone understands the process or system being used, your business will flourish.
Have your IT professionals take a look at the process your business professionals are using and vice versa. There may be an easier solution or tool that can simplify both profession’s ways of doing things in order to make everyone more efficient.
Once things are easier, you can sell more, onboard new clients and have more time to dedicate to other, more important things.
The best thing to keep in mind is the plan that is going to work is the one that you have in front of you. You will not always be able to make your process simple right away — you might have to use a complicated system if it is the only one available to you. But, there is always the ability to go back and simplify over time.
Complexity crushes our ability to talk to people and it takes up time. Write down what you’re doing as you’re doing it, explain it to someone else so that they understand what you’re doing and know that you can always go back and simplify as you learn and grow with the system.
The State of the vCIO in 2020
Every year Managed Services Platform publishes a report about the state of the vCIO. We summarize the experiences of the largest vCIO community in the world. We’re not just interested in the major trends in the technology space, but how those impacted the vCIO role and responsibilities.
STRUCTURE, MANAGE AND AUTOMATE YOUR ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND VCIO PROCESESS
Name and focus
The use of a vCIO or Virtual CIO job title is not as common as we would think. The title has been overused for glorified account management for many low maturity MSPs in the past. Therefore the progressive “real vCIOs” wanted to differentiate themselves. This effort led to many different names of the job such as (Technical) Account Manager, IT Consultant, IT Advisor, and even more recently, the title of Digital Transformation Advisor.
Not only the name seemed to be shift from the ‘technology” narrative, but the role itself expanded with more business functions. Planning, budgeting and architecture have been in the job description for a while, however recently we see more organizational, execution, project portfolio management, application management and business intelligence components are coming to the surface.
As COVID-19 has pushed Digital Transformation initiatives, the IT manager role had to adopt to focus on more business outcomes rather than focusing only the technology deliverables.
Responsibilities
In order to avoid misunderstandings, we have summarized client engagement responsibilities in the following quadrants. Because the title doesn’t hold great significance, we are classifying members according to their business-strategic responsibilities. As such, a vCIO’s communication strategy and long term directions should be with client executives through regular Strategy Business Overviews, Technical Landscapes and Strategy Scoreboards.
Another important characteristic of a vCIO job should be as a full-time dedicated professional, who can supply a regular strategic-business communication channel with clients. Without regular communication this strategic focus can be lost, along with the real business goals, which are to increase a tactical line for advancements in technology.
Challenges for small MSPs
Many times the efforts of small MSPs with less than 15-20 employees are in vain because the owner(s), who attend this job, are often neither able to delegate the vCIO role nor do they have enough time to fulfill that role themselves. In our experience, large companies with more than 25-30 employees are able to build a team of several full-time, dedicated professional vCIOs, which can be a human guarantee for the earlier mentioned regular strategic-business communication.
Consequently, the lack of success generates a continuous migration of vCIOs, especially between MSPs with less than 20-25 employees who cannot assign enough resources for building professional vCIO services through proper hiring, continual training and process development methods.
Skills of the job
Commenting on a human guarantee for delivering successful vCIO success services, it is important to note that however the majority of vCIOs (79%) have more than 10 years experience in the managed IT services market, they typically have been in their current positions for less than 5 years. These numbers show two things:
On one side, a significant part of them came from the technical side, which means that they previously held an engineering or support operation position. That’s why they usually designate Information Technology and Engineering as a primary function, Business Development and Sales as a secondary function, followed by Operations and Project Management, and finally, Consultation functions.
However, as a practical matter, these priorities should be in reverse. These numbers reveal why a lot of vCIOs cannot prevail as a business-trusted advisor, as they should be. Such vCIOs can be viewed as simple technical account managers, who are absent of adequate business skills/abilities and who continue their old technical lines of communication in IT infrastructure, network system backups, DRPs, and support ticket reviews.
Learn more about the 12 mistakes vCIOs make
Interesting findings
It’s strange that although we are a software development company we emphasize the human and process factors of successful delivery of vCIO services. This is because we realize that these two factors are at least as important as the right utilization of the right tool. Furthermore, there are prerequisites for any tool utilization fulfillment. This understanding ignited the collaboration with Humanize IT and Digital Maturity Group and the development of new tactical assessments that IT needs with MSP clients, such as remote meeting security risks, cybersecurity, public cloud adoption and application integration.
These three factors: human factors, processes factors, tool factors, are a key component of the profitable vCIO services.
Growth of the community
When we asked our clients about their MRR growth, only 30 percent have expressed experiences with an average growth greater than 20 percent over the years when they used our platform and another 24 percent have expressed experiences with an average MRR growth that ranges between 1 to 10 percent. The gap between these two groups shows that the world economy, including managed services, were increasing before the COVID era and MSPs were able to show a solid growth with low effort.
But the world has got everything upside down with COVID and the aforementioned regular strategic-business communication has become overrated. Due to the current trends, businesses are cutting expenditures, and if an MSP cannot verify and project their real business service values, they will surely lose a significant edge by not being able to adapt to the changing trends.
See previous reports:
- Managed Services Platform vCIO Report 2019
- Reporting vCIOs in the United States of America - 2015
- Reporting vCIOs in Canada - 2015
- Reporting vCIOs in Australia - 2015
- Reporting vCIOs in New Zealand - 2015
If you currently do not have vCIO services, but still intend to implement them in the future, we will be able to support your efforts with an exclusive coaching package and our client meeting report tool as well.
